INDIGO (Andalusian) by Frank Mosca

Indigo is a color modifier found in many pigeon breeds. Evidence indicates it
originally came from the middle east. Even today, many breeds from that area
show evidence of it in their phenotype. However, because indigo has varying
expression depending up the base color, it wasn’t described as something
genetically different until the mid-thirties. Wendell Levi and Willard F.
Hollander, in unison, worked out the genetics of indigo. I’m not going to go
into the now sixty year old history, but if you’re interested this effort is
describe in Levi’s book, The Pigeon. Suffice it to say, though, that indigo was
found to be non-sex linked dominant in its inheritance. It is not quite a simple
dominant, however, and this is why it often goes unrecognized even in racing
homers, where I’ve seen it in direct imports from top Belgian lofts.

Indigo in its heterozygous state (i.e., only one gene in the bird) is what many
fanciers try to achieve because heterozygous indigo (het indigo) in combination
with spread (think black for the moment) produces one of the most attractive of
all pigeon colorations, Andalusian, so named for its similarity in color to the
Andalusian chicken. It is a deep indigo blue coloration all over the bird.
Better specimens - at least in shows - are often laced on each feather with a
darker indigo blue coloration. (Homozygous indigo with spread gives something
totally different, a light bodied pigeon with a darker head.) This andalusian
color only shows up on a blue series pigeon (i.e., a blue barless/bar/check
which also carries het indigo and spread. A bird in either of the other pigment
series (brown or Ash-red) will not be andalusian even though it is spread and
het indigo. In fact, indigo will be almost invisible on the bird. Ash-red
indigos are fairly difficult to differentiate from simple ash-red birds --
though once one knows what to look for, it is sometimes possible to do so.
Ash-red Indigos often show a more "purple" tint to the rump and head than do
simple Ash-red birds. Brown indigos are simply sort of “yucky” looking.

If a bird in the blue series is not spread (black) but simply check or bar, het
indigo is still obvious, but much less striking in its effects. Normally, the
black tail bar is washed out, the checks and wing bar are changed to a bronzy
indigo coloration and the blue body color tends to be a bit darker. (One of
these birds crossed with a black will give you about 50% andalusian colored
birds, depending on whether your black is heterozygous spread or homozygous
spread.) So far, we’ve discussed het indigo, but what about homozygous indigo?
What does it look like on the bird?

Homozygous means a bird carries two genes for the trait, rather than just one.
Some people get confused here and believe female pigeons can’t be homozygous for
any color modifying trait. That’s incorrect. Because indigo is non-sex-linked,
both males and females may be homozygous for it. Homozygous indigo (homo indigo)
produces not the andalusian colored bird, but rather an Ash-red mimic. I’ve seen
examples that looked just like ash-red checks or bars. The only difference is
that in homo indigo birds, the rump and neck is normally a darker indigo hue
than is found in ash-red birds. Some, so much so that they are easily
distinguished for what they are, others, however, are so close to Ash-red that
breeding tests are about the only way to be sure what factor you’re dealing
with. Often such ash-red mimics are mated to ash-reds and because indigo is near
impossible to determine on the ash-red series, the mutation (indigo) is carried
along hidden from the fancier’s view.

Quite likely, indigo entered racing pigeons from the early crosses in Belgium.
Levi, in fact, discovered indigo in Carneaux, a pigeon whose ancestry is from
the Belgian/French border area and stretches beyond that back to middle-age
Syria and birds now called Lebanons. Indigo is still common in Lebanons and many
Carneaux. Some of these birds were undoubtedly used in the creation of the
modern racer and the indigo mutation carried along. One imported Janssen hen
I’ve seen locally is an indigo bar (listed as brown on its pedigree). The
European fancier sold it because it “was a funny color.” Don’t misunderstand me.
Neither Belgian fanciers, nor those of the middle east are stupid pigeon people.
Occasionally, they got what we today call andalusian-colored pigeons. They
recognized them as something different and had various names for them. It was
Levi and Hollander, though, who worked out the inheritance of the mutation and
allowed us to create the andalusian color whenever we wished.

For anyone who wishes to add a touch of color to his flying loft, indigo is a
fantastic modifier to work with. There are no drawbacks to it. By that, I mean,
it’s not like almond or dominant opal which shouldn’t be mated to one another
lest hatching suffer. Indigo to indigo matings merely produce ash-red mimics
which can be mated to blacks to produce andalusians in quantity. Indigo is also
“fairly” common in race birds now. It’s by no means something you find at every
shipping, but a little hunting should allow you to find one to cross into your
stud. Maybe someone in the Rare Color Racing Pigeon Club might have one to
spare? Or someone in your own club? If you’d like to create those prettier laced
andalusians, I’ve a little trick from one of the best show breeders in the
world.

Once you’ve got your andalusian-colored pigeons, stop crossing them to black.
Black, at least good colored black, has lots of “yucky” bronzes. These bronzes
make the black shine like a crow, but they don’t do much for andalusian,
creating instead a muddy coloration to the shield. Instead, cross the andalusian
to T-pattern blues (i.e., what homer breeders in the U.S. call “velvets” or
“blue-tailed” blacks.) I had planned to do that in my own loft, but, a few
months back, my local Cooper’s hawk (Accipiter cooperii) decided an andalusian
dinner was too good to pass up. She also likes blues, checks and splashes, by
the way, so it isn’t just indigo which makes the birds a menu platter.

Copyright 1997 by Frank Mosca. This work may be downloaded
or copied for non-commercial individual use only. All other rights under
copyright are retained by the author.